Mike Buchanan and a feminist university student debate sexual consent

This discussion on a prime-time BBC radio programme was prompted by a story about George Lawlor, a politics and sociology student at Warwick University. Lawlor rightly objected to being invited onto a class about sexual consent.

I was interviewed by Nicky Campbell, along with Leah Phillips, a PhD student at the University. From her university profile page:

My research focuses on our cultural concern with the adolescent female body, and that body’s presentation and construction in popular media and culture.

More than a quarter of sexual offences against adults of the opposite sex are committed by women, yet in 2013 only one in every 146 people charged with sexual offences in the UK was a woman. Details are in the section on sexual abuse are in our election manifesto, pp.31-37. It includes a link to an American study showing that a majority of incarcerated (male) rapists were sexually abused when they were children, by women, sometimes their own mothers.

Convicted female sex offenders are also treated far more leniently than men, usually receiving only a suspended sentence – i.e. no punishment – even when their victims are children. In a recent case – reported here – a 21-year-old babysitter, Jade Hatt, received a suspended sentence despite having had sex with an 11-year-old boy. From a newspaper report:

The judge gave Hatt a suspended sentence on the grounds that she was ‘immature’ while her victim was unusually mature, which ‘narrows the arithmetic age gap’.